Intelligent machines

Volvo Construction Equipment has developed two demonstration machines – an excavator and a wheel loader – which can operate without an operator on construction sites.The project is partially financed by public funding and is a close collaboration between the Volvo Group and two universities in Germany and Sweden to develop machines that can think for themselves.

Volvo Construction Equipment has developed two demonstration machines which can operate without an operator on construction sites

Since the beginning of the project in 2008, continuous progress has been made; active safety features have been added and machines have become more and more intelligent. This type of intelligence machines can see the ground and stone piles through vision sensors and ­perform excavation work and other tasks ­efficiently.

While the manufacture of autonomous machines is already technically feasible it will still be several years before we will see a lot of machines with this type of intelligence. More development work on sensors and data processing applications is required, not to mention all of the necessary infrastructural development, as well as legislation and public acceptance.